The Case of the Journeying Boy

Rating:
Summary: Towards a world unknown
Review: John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (pseudonym Michael Innes) was born in 1906 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, and his mysteries reflect both his scholarship (the title of this book is from a poem by Thomas Hardy), and the year he spent in Vienna, studying Freudian psychoanalysis.

The setting of `Journeying Boy' (1949) is a product of the two years Innes spent at Queen's University in Belfast. I believe it is the only one of his mysteries to take place in Ireland. It is also notable in that it does not feature his most famous detective, Sir John Appleby, but rather Appleby's successor at New Scotland Yard, Detective-Inspector Thomas Cadover. The new Inspector is a bit of a dry stick compared to the irrepressible Appleby---he refers to his predecessor as `the wayward Appleby'---but Cadover detects with the best of his literary kin (Appleby, Lord Peter, Professor Fen, etc.) All of the characters are introspective (remember that year in Vienna) and finely drawn. No caricatures are to be found in `Journeying Boy'---not even the nuclear physicist.

Not even the Irish.

The narrative duties are divided between three main characters: Inspector Cadover; Humphrey Paxton, the adolescent son of a famous nuclear physicist; and Richard Thewless, the middle-aged and somewhat unimaginative tutor who is hired to take Humphrey on a vacation to Ireland. As always with Innes, the mystery is a mixture of high drama and low farce. `Journeying Boy' doesn't quite venture into the surreal depths of some of the Appleby novels. However, Innes displays his talent for hallucinatory description in several places, including a scene where the tutor, Mr. Thewless is stumbling through the dark halls of a draughty, decaying Irish country house. Just as he becomes certain that he is being followed, his candle gutters out:

"All of the objects...that lined the broad corridors of the house were swathed in a white sheeting from which one could have puffed the dust in passing. The effect could not well be other than spectral. It was as if, in addition to the [mansion's family and servants], the place owned another body of inhabitants, who waited, shrouded and silent in the gathering dusk, the stroke of some hour that should release them to their own nocturnal offices. Nor indeed did their silence appear entire, since the wind as it sighed through Killyboffin had the effect of prompting them to sinister confabulation, the result of which was...an uneasy twitch and stir in their enveloping garments."

Even though `Journeying Boy' mentions Appleby only in passing, it is one of Innes's best, most intricate mysteries. This author can switch from farce to horror better and faster than any of his contemporaries. You'll be laughing while your hair is still standing straight up on the back of your neck. If you don't believe me, read the chapter that takes place in a labyrinth of sea caves, where the boy Humphrey attempts to escape from his enemies.

Michael Innes is one of the finest, most unjustly neglected authors from the British Golden Age of Mystery. If you haven't already discovered him, try starting with "The Case of the Journeying Boy," or his very literate Appleby mystery, "Hamlet, Revenge!"

Rating:
Summary: Towards a world unknown
Review: John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (pseudonym Michael Innes) was born in 1906 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, and his mysteries reflect both his scholarship (the title of this book is from a poem by Thomas Hardy), and the year he spent in Vienna, studying Freudian psychoanalysis.

The setting of 'Journeying Boy' (1949) is a product of the two years Innes spent at Queen's University in Belfast. I believe it is the only one of his mysteries to take place in Ireland. It is also notable in that it does not feature his most famous detective, Sir John Appleby, but rather Appleby's successor at New Scotland Yard, Detective-Inspector Thomas Cadover. The new Inspector is a bit of a dry stick compared to the irrepressible Appleby---he refers to his predecessor as 'the wayward Appleby'---but Cadover detects with the best of his literary kin (Appleby, Lord Peter, Professor Fen, etc.) All of the characters are introspective (remember that year in Vienna) and finely drawn. No caricatures are to be found in 'Journeying Boy'---not even the nuclear physicist.

Not even the Irish.

The narrative duties are divided between three main characters: Inspector Cadover; Humphrey Paxton, the adolescent son of a famous nuclear physicist; and Richard Thewless, the middle-aged and somewhat unimaginative tutor who is hired to take Humphrey on a vacation to Ireland. As always with Innes, the mystery is a mixture of high drama and low farce. 'Journeying Boy' doesn't quite venture into the surreal depths of some of the Appleby novels. However, Innes displays his talent for hallucinatory description in several places, including a scene where the tutor, Mr. Thewless is stumbling through the dark halls of a draughty, decaying Irish country house. Just as he becomes certain that he is being followed, his candle gutters out:

"All of the objects...that lined the broad corridors of the house were swathed in a white sheeting from which one could have puffed the dust in passing. The effect could not well be other than spectral. It was as if, in addition to the [mansion's family and servants], the place owned another body of inhabitants, who waited, shrouded and silent in the gathering dusk, the stroke of some hour that should release them to their own nocturnal offices. Nor indeed did their silence appear entire, since the wind as it sighed through Killyboffin had the effect of prompting them to sinister confabulation, the result of which was...an uneasy twitch and stir in their enveloping garments."

Even though 'Journeying Boy' mentions Appleby only in passing, it is one of Innes's best, most intricate mysteries. This author can switch from farce to horror better and faster than any of his contemporaries. You'll be laughing while your hair is still standing straight up on the back of your neck. If you don't believe me, read the chapter that takes place in a labyrinth of sea caves, where the boy Humphrey attempts to escape from his enemies.

Michael Innes is one of the finest, most unjustly neglected authors from the British Golden Age of Mystery. If you haven't already discovered him, try starting with "The Case of the Journeying Boy," or his very literate Appleby mystery, "Hamlet, Revenge!"